12751
Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism
I. In the old days, you had your Culture, and that was that. Your Culture told you lots of stuff about what you were and weren’t allowed to do, and by golly you listened. Your Culture told yo…
Topics /
Society, Policy & Culture
The most popular blog posts about society, policy & culture on Hacker News. 13,069 posts.
12752
40% of Millennials OK with limiting speech offensive to minorities
That's compared with 27% of Gen Xers and 24% of Boomers who say the same.
12753
Clean Coder Blog
Peter was showing the relationship between age and reputation on stack overflow. The correlation is unmistakable. The older the programmer, the better the reputation, by far. He also shows, in the following graph, that the reason for this correlation is that the older programmers answer far more questions than the…
12754
ACLU History
In the years following World War I, America was gripped by the fear that the Communist Revolution that had taken place in Russia would spread to the United States. As is often the case when fear outweighs rational debate, civil liberties paid the price. In November 1919 and January 1920, in what notoriously became…
12755
How popular is Donald Trump?
Silver Bulletin approval ratings for President Trump — and all presidents since Truman.
12756
Lab-made? CoV2 genealogy through the lens of gain-of-function research
Virologists have created dozens of chimeric coronaviruses in the lab over the past 20 years.
12757
Deforestation and Forest Loss
Explore long-term changes in deforestation and deforestation rates across the world today.
12758
Federal Spending: Where Does the Money Go
In fiscal year 2014, the federal government will spend around $3.8 trillion. These trillions of dollars make up a considerable chunk - around 22 percent - of the US. economy, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That means that federal government spending makes up a sizable share of all money spent in the…
12759
2022 Expert Survey on Progress in AI
Collected data and analysis from a large survey of machine learning researchers.
12760
Participation Inequality: The 90-9-1 Rule for Social Features
In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.
12761
Who has contributed most to global CO2 emissions?
Our impact on climate change is not just about emissions that occur today. How much we emitted in the past also matters.
12762
A number of countries have decoupled economic growth from energy use, even if we take offshored production into account
Energy use is declining in some countries, despite economic growth.
12763
Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture
More than three-quarters of global agricultural land is used for livestock, despite meat and dairy making up a much smaller share of the world's protein and calories.
12764
Pro-Neutrality, Anti-Title II
Any regulation, including those around net neutrality, should be put to a cost-benefit analysis. In this case regulation advocates come up short.
12765
Average Household Electricity Consumption - 2026
We used data from EIA to get up-to-date average household electricity consumption. We compiled statistics to compare to other countries.
12766
Errata: Steve Gibson
a summary of Steven Gibson events and quotes demonstrating charlatan status
12767
What was the death toll from Chernobyl and Fukushima?
When we think of nuclear safety, two accidents often come to mind: Chernobyl and Fukushima. What was the death toll and impact of these disasters?
12768
The Poorest 20% of Americans Are Richer on Average Than Most European Nations
The US is so economically exceptional that the poorest 20 percent of Americans are richer than many of the world’s most affluent nations.
12769
New Acquisitions: 1933 and the Definition of Fascism
Today we’re going to look at definitions of fascism and ask the question – you may have guessed – if Donald Trump is running for President as a fascist. Worry not, this isn’…
12770
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
WHO is continuously monitoring and responding to this pandemic. This questions and answers page will be updated as more is known about COVID-19, how it spreads and how it is affecting people worldwide. For more information, regularly check the WHO coronavirus pages. https://www.who.int/covid-19
12771
Lizardman’s Constant Is 4%
Beware of Phantom Lizardmen I have only done a little bit of social science research, but it was enough to make me hate people. One study I helped with analyzed whether people from different countr…
12772
The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground
After more than four decades of serving as the nation's economic majority, the U.S. middle class is now matched in size by those in the economic tiers above and below it.
12773
Universal Love, Said The Cactus Person
“Universal love,” said the cactus person. “Transcendent joy,” said the big green bat. “Right,” I said. “I’m absolutely in favor of both those things.…
12774
U.S. lags behind peer countries in mobility
The notion that anyone in America who is willing and able to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” can achieve significant upward mobility is deeply embedded in U.S. society. Conventional wisdom holds that class barriers in the United States are the lowest among the world’s advanced economies. Motivating this…
12775
AI Written, AI Read cartoon
One piece of slang that has long embodied the short attention span Internet age is TL;DR, short for “too long; didn’t read.” With the explosion of generative AI tools, we’re rapidly entering the age of TL;DW: “too long, didn’t write.” A January survey from Fishbowl found that 40% of nearly 12,000 workers have used…
12776
Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2020
Report showing the number of people who are locked up in the United States and why
12777
Masking lack of evidence with politics
The increasing polarised and politicised views 1 on whether to wear masks in public during the current COVID-19 crisis hides a bitter truth on the state of contemporary research and the value we pose on clinical evidence to guide our decisions.
12778
Economic Inequality
How is inequality measured, who produces key databases, and what does the data tell us?
12779
Israel's apartheid against Palestinians
Palestinians are systematically subjected to home demolitions and forced evictions, and live in constant fear of losing their homes. For more than 73 years, Israel has been forcibly displacing entire Palestinian communities. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians’ homes have been demolished, causing terrible trauma &…
12780
The Growth Ponzi Scheme: A Crash Course
Ponzi schemes fail because they are built on illusions: there is no there there. So what happens when an entire continent of towns and cities is caught up in a kind of Growth Ponzi Scheme? We are finding out.